Magnificent frigatebird
Fregata magnificens
— Where the name comes from
It is named after the frigate, the fast ship that ran down merchantmen to plunder them: French sailors watched these birds chase boobies and terns to make them disgorge their fish, and named them after the privateers. In English they were man-of-war birds. Magnificens is no exaggeration: the courting male inflates a red throat pouch the size of a balloon.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Cormorants and boobies
- Habitat
- Tropical seas; islands and mangroves for nesting
- Range
- The tropical Atlantic and Pacific, from the Antilles to the Galápagos
- Size
- 89–114 cm, wingspan 217–244 cm, 1.1–1.6 kg
- Diet
- Flying fish, squid, food robbed from other birds
- Lifespan
- 30 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It has the greatest wing area relative to weight of any bird.
- 02
It cannot land on water: the feathers soak and it can no longer take off.
- 03
It raises a single chick, dependent on its mother for over a year.
— What sets it apart
It flies for weeks without touching land, and it sleeps while doing so. Fitting its close relatives with sensors that recorded position and brain activity together revealed that in flight they keep one hemisphere asleep and the other awake for a few minutes at a time — and occasionally, for a very few seconds, both. They ride the updraughts beneath clouds to four thousand metres without flapping, glide down for kilometres and begin again: a seabird that cannot swim and never settles on the sea.
